I think there are two elements that have to come together.
1. the value proposition has somehow shifted - that job for that pay is no longer as attractive
2. optimism about the future - you have to believe that if you quit, you'll be no worse off than you are now.
#1 is obvious, but #2 is a bit surprising in the current climate.
As usual, my Debbie has a dozen sometimes conflicting thoughts.
>>job security is a myth
At my (former) company, they laid off not just 80+ percent, but all the HR people. 17,000 employees got effectively ghosted. No communication. So it wasn't just the security. It's that people thought they had a certain relationship with the company and then they realized that when the going got tough, they were totally on their own and the company wasn't even going to email them to say what was happening. A lot of people told me they did not feel hostile, but the no longer felt any loyalty either.
So it's not just the sense of security that evaporated, but it redefined the relationship.
>> fed up
I have friends and acquaintances who are waiters, bartenders, cashiers, entrance gate rangers. They all confirm that the stories you hear about how bad things are on the airlines are actually true everywhere, they just don't get press. I was talking to a campground ranger who took a job as a gate ranger last year when the campgrounds were closed. He said he will starve before he does it again. It was a daily sh## show of abuse from the public. He was constantly screamed at and frequently (like at least once a day) fake coughed at by an anti-masker.
Friends who are waiters tell me the same thing.
The shuttle buses have not run here since Covid, but before Covid, drivers were getting *assaulted* by the public. Basically, they have a capacity limit and if they're full and nobody wants to get off at a stop, the don't stop. People created a human chain across the road, stopped the bus and when the driver said they couldn't get one, someone assaulted her.
I also think there are some logistics issues. People were barely able to hold things together when the day care and the school were running normally, but they were running at 99% of capacity. Take away a few hours of school each day and the whole thing crumbles.
Finally, there have been a record number of retirements - 3.6 million, which is 2 million more than expected
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/09/04/ten-million-job-openings-labor-shortage/That maps with what I see in my social set. I know several people who had been planning on a few more years of work, but they are of Social Security age and in one case already of Medicare age. When work got just a little bit less pleasant, the value proposition on delaying retirement shifted.
>>optimism
As for the optimism part, there are constant headlines about the labor shortage. People are looking at that and thinking, "Well, it's clear that my employer doesn't have any loyalty to me, so there's no downside to switching." So people are quitting on hopes of finding something better, but knowing that if push comes to shove, they can have their old job back or one just like it.
>> Plumbers, electricians
I think that's different. At least here, there is a mad construction boom and so the contractors are trying to add to their head count. It's not people quitting, it's finding new talent with the skills and work ethic. A contractor building two houses on our street told a friend he has guys working for him now that he has fired three times, but he needs them and they took the job.
